Chalk
by skabs
Summary: pre-series, one-shot. Charlie in the garage on the day his mother dies... introspective, just a bit.


i know i said i wasn't going to do any numb3rs fics, but that was because i wasn't sure i could get charlie's voice right without understanding the math... the i had a bit of a revelation and my brain started working like a thesarus... rather amusing acctually, but this is an English Majors take on Charlie Eppes, pre-series.

please enjoy, and Num3rs does not belong to me.

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His world was condensed, concentrated, reduced… on sale. He scoffed, wiped the latest chalk marks from the never ending green, and wrote new figures to replace the incorrect summary of parts. His hand was shaking, but he was steadfastly ignoring that. Ignoring the fatigue and the dust-covered hands, ignoring the loose papers that had fallen to the floor, he stepped on them as he paced back and forth from one set to the next. He would step back and allow his vision to focus on one problem, the numbers, characters, charts, graphs, jumping out and pouring into his brain. The sound of chalk hitting the slate was sharp, clear, edged in a way that he needed to maintain.

He vaguely recalled angry voices, hard words, grasping hands. He pushed away the thought like he pushed away the fingers and shoves. He fought against the restraints of his mind at the same time he struggled with insistent hands. If he could just finish this, his world would be saved.

Saved… whole, resuscitated, allowing him to breathe once more without this constant weight on his chest. The blackness, numbness that the numbers induced, held his thoughts constrained. If he didn't think about it, it wasn't there. But hiding under the blankets, closing the door tightly, did not stop the rapid exchange of theories and insights from rattling his brain. He had to write them all down; they didn't see that, he had to finish this.

He pretended not to notice the water dripping on his naked foot, the cold concrete beneath his toes, the hissing of his breath as he took his hand and wiped the last equation off the board. The water fell, dripped down his sweatshirt as he bent his head, letting the tears land on his crossed arms as he curled in on himself.

He couldn't. He couldn't fix it, solve it, resolve the ending into a unified whole. He'd tried, he'd failed. The only thing left was chalk boards filled with a useless problem that could have opened up the universe, if only he'd gotten there in time.

He shook violently as he slowly pulled the sweatshirt over his head and wrapped it around his fist. Carefully, almost reverently he ran it across the top of the first board and continued down in a gentle manner, wiping the knowledge from the restraints as if freeing it for the future. It took a while, but eventually the only color left was a vast expanse of green, framed in light blond wood, breaking each component back into its separate part.

He looked down at the chalk covered sweatshirt and let his hand drop to the floor, the dirty cloth thumped with a soft cloud of dust as it landed.

He thought his breathing couldn't get anymore labored, but now… now he hadn't the numbers to distract him. For the first time in months he felt his heart thumping under his ribs, too fast, too erratic. His long curly hair hung messily in his face, his bare feet were freezing, and his jeans were so caked with dust and long forgotten meals, that he'd eaten standing up absently correcting and recalculating, that he was pretty sure that they'd stand on their own if he stepped out of them.

But all that registered briefly, quickly, leaving him with the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him.

"Are you finished?" the bitter voice echoed in the large open space.

"I…" the shaking had traveled up, encompassing his chest until nothing could release from the tight, burning throat but a gulping gasp. He fell to his knees and just sat, weak, shivering in the gloom. "I'm sorry!" he forced out, collapsing forward until his head was on the concrete, his arms tangled over his head as he sobbed wretchedly into his knees.

Like in the previous encounters he didn't hear the footsteps approach. But this time he didn't fling himself away as the hands encompassed his shoulders and pushed him away from himself.

He found himself against a strong shoulder, crying, howling at the abrupt failure he'd only just accepted. He couldn't save her… he couldn't save his world… While minutes, hours seemed to pass, the tears pooled, then soaked into the concrete.

"It's not your fault," the voice was still bitter, but it wasn't condemning any longer.

"She's gone isn't she?" he asked, but no longer wanted to know the answer.

"She woke up long enough to tell dad goodbye," his brother ran his fingers through the mop of his hair and rested on the back of his neck.

The heavy hand had always found purchase on his neck. Resting there to guide, restrain, comfort; too warm and hard on some occasions, other times just perfectly stern enough to reassure.

"I tried to find the answer, Don, I know if I'd had just a little…"

"More time? Mom didn't have more time Charlie, and you wasted what little time we had trying to figure out the answer to some stupid unsolvable math question!" just like that the anger was back, the heavy hand released.

There was no answer to that, at least none he could articulate. How could he tell his brother, that it wasn't about the answer?

"Just go," Charlie choked out, forced himself to his feet.

"What the hell?" Don was still on his knees, watching Charlie as he shuffled out of the garage, deliberately placing his feet so that he wasn't stumbling. It reminded him of the drunken stupor he'd indulged in too many times in the past few months to recall. As Charlie disappeared around the door, Don just sat in the preternatural silence. He glared up at the chalk boards that had taken over his brother, blaming them, blaming the numbers that he knew floated around Charlie's head, even now.

He'd never understood it, how he could become so engrossed in numbers, in theory's, in mind numbing debates about quantum whatever and invisible expressions. In a way, he envied Charlie. How he wished, in the past few months, that he could push away the world. Strong shoulders, is what his father had told him years ago, before college, before he joined the FBI.

His father had seen something in him, before he was even allowed to drive a car. Strong shoulders that bear the weight of the world. He felt like he'd born Charlie's weight long enough, thrown it off, disappeared, and then ended up back here anyway. He held the family in his hands, caring for every minute detail. While Alan was at the hospital, always at Margaret's side, Don made sure the bills were paid, kept the house from collapsing into a slump, kept the dust from falling (because he hired a house keeper), and left food for Charlie on his desk in the garage.

It seemed easier, at the time, to just let Charlie disappear. Mom never asked for him, except to tell Don to take care of his brother, and that pissed him off more than he guessed at the time. He would storm into the garage and physically yank his brother from the boards, shut him in the bathroom until he heard the shower running, then steal the clothes, leaving new ones on the toilet seat. Charlie would come back downstairs his curly hair sopping wet, his clothing sticking to him because he didn't really take the time to dry off, and Don could almost see the new ideas floating around his head.

Holding Charlie in his hands was like trying to keep water from slipping through the cracks, fissures that formed between fingers. He kept dripping, falling away from him, and Don didn't know how to stop that.

He pushed the heels of his hands against his closed eye lids until pink dots began to form and fill the blackness. The insistent pounding headache caught him as he held his breath, carefully pushing back everything until the ragged emotions that pushed, expanded, that wanted to escape disappeared.

Charlie was in the shower, Dad was in bed, and there was a bottle of scotch hidden in his sock drawer.

He got to his feet and left the garage, flicking off the lights before closing the door with a final click.

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it's not much, but i had to write it down... i didn't do much editing, only read it through a couple of times to get rid of redunce, and i'm not very happy with the ending, but i had to stop it somewhere. hope you liked!


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